Secrets
by Ditey
Summary: "Clark thinks he has a secret? Chloe has secrets within secrets."


Secrets  
  
Pairing: Chloe/Clark  
  
Rating: G  
  
Spoilers/Last Ep Seen Before Writing: Exodus  
  
Legalities: Do not own WB, Clark, Lana-ville, that's evident, or there would be a whole lotta changes.  
  
Muse: I don't know...The Muse of Forlorn and Distant Affection  
  
Enjoy and please review! Thank you!  
  
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Chloe suspects that just about everyone has a secret.   
  
Her dad probably has a few, Pete must know something that he's never told anyone-- Lex has many secrets, that's evident--and even perfect Lana with all her talk of truth and honesty has secrets.  
  
Clark has a secret.  
  
Or at least he thinks he does.  
  
And God, Lionel Luthor has all but one missing piece until he knows it too.   
  
Chloe's secret? Apparently that she is, or was, whatever it is, in love with her best friend is no longer secret.   
  
Her secret is the nine hours she spends every weekend confined in these four walls, armed with a computer and files on just about every person ever born. Searching, digging, looking through files, cross-referencing, interviewing, whatever it took to get every iota of information on Clark Kent.  
  
Yeah, the one she is/was in love with.   
  
Her secret is that she's doing exactly what he told her not to do, looking into his life and encroaching on his privacy.  
  
Privacy. Ha. He wants to hear privacy?   
  
Chloe has records on Metropolis United Charities, which never dealed with another child besides Clark, and a pact involving the Kents and the Luthors in return for the adoption. The somewhat *illegal* adoption.   
  
She knows the exact location each townsmember was last seen before the meteor shower.   
  
She can find the GPA of every student in Smallville High. She has the records to show the financial troubles of every person in the town. One touch of a button, and she can access email, track websites visited, phone calls...  
  
The list goes on and on. Privacy is non-existant.  
  
Lionel Luthor is looking for all of this. He wants her to forget her friends, her loyalties, her feelings for everything. He says the best reporter is the one that does nothing else. Reports. At any cost.  
  
He promises her internships, scholarships, one-way tickets to Colombia, Harvard, the best journalistic universities in the country, as an incentive. He offers her extra spending money if she is willing to videotape her conversations with Clark without his knowledge, or bug his fortress, or bring him a sample of his chewed gum to be analyzed.  
  
She's ashamed to think that she would ever have given in. To allow herself to be manipulated in a moment of emotion. Lionel thinks he can get a love-sick, depressed girl channel her anger through what he wants. Lionel thinks he has her caught.  
  
But the worst part, is that he does.   
  
She knows she has to do this. She knows if she doesn't spend nine hourse one that cursed computer, or research Clark's adoption agency, or look through medical files...  
  
She doesn't even want to think about it. What might happen if it wasn't her, if she didn't take the offer and didn't investigate on Clark.  
  
Because Chloe has another secret.  
  
Her secret is that she knows Clark's.   
  
Well, of course. She could find real names and research the mysterious past of freaks of the weeks, did he really think she couldn't do it for just about anyone else?   
  
And Clark really did have to be more careful. Maybe he was lucky it was just her, still conscious while Clark decided to fling a eighteen-year-old boy across a room. And did he really think no one saw him start fires with his eyes, or capture his superspeed on film and slow motion to the point of recognition? Chloe knows about everything.   
  
He hadn't told her, of course, he's probably still insecure about her whole, 'a good story comes first' motto. Maybe he thinks she'll sell him out. He probably sees Chloe as a journalist, and nothing more. Not a friend, not a big enough friend to keep secrets.   
  
Chloe can keep a secret. She's proved him wrong for years. She didn't sell his story, publically expose his powers...quite the opposite.  
  
She just never imagined the responsibiliy it brought. All those nights staying up--not thinking about Clark, like her father and Lana might suspect--but trying to cover his tracks. After all those appearances at scenes of the crimes. Every single odd activity in Smallville could be traced back to Clark.   
  
The morning after the wierd incidents, she was talking to editors, setting stories straight, providing witness reports and alibis such as, 'Of course Clark Kent wasn't at [insert scene of crime, most usually old abandoned warehouse], he was studying with Pete and I at my house. You need witnesses? Talk to my father! I can't believe...' etc.  
  
And the spaceship hid in the storm cellar. How many neighbors she had to convince, there was no strange light coming from the Kent Farm, and if they were so concerned, *she* would investigate.   
  
All her articles, edited to be Clark-friendly. No accounts of super humanness in the Torch. Just a miraculous, 'when the victim re-gained consciousness, her hero had fled the scene'.   
  
She made sacrifices too--she had swept away feelings and romantic entanglements every time she decided she wasn't going to pursue him. She would be nothing to him. Until the point that she *was* nothing to him.   
  
After everything she does, she still doesn't expect anything more from him that a 'hi', and he doesn't either.   
  
She had protected him more than he had ever protected her, that was clear. And sometimes she thinks she loves him more than he ever could.   
  
Because those nine hours she spends in her tiny little room in a Luthor lab, searching through files and investigating his life--it's all for him.   
  
Because when she finds that Clark doesn't have parents, and that some sort of alien substance was seen through Dr. Bryce's microscope, she can cover his tracks.  
  
So that when Lionel Luthor does his hourly check-up to see what his young reporter had managed to discover, she can fabricate parents that have similar genes and died during the meteor shower.   
  
So it's *her* theories that leads Mr. Luthor's suspicions, so it's *her* fallacy and not what might be the very close truth. Lionel knows some awful people that wouldn't be afraid to harness Clark's power and expose him as a circus side show. Use aliens and genetically engineer them to create unstoppable armies and worse.  
  
And she would never, ever let that happen to Clark. Because she loves him, and she's his friend first, journalist second. Don't let anyone say otherwise.  
  
"Ms. Sullivan, diligent as usual." Lionel Luthor creeps up behind her and places his hand on her shoulder. She lightly shudders before turning around with files in hand.  
  
"All ready with another theory, I see." He smiles and it makes Chloe uneasy, that she's about to lie to the face of a man that could hurt everyone she loved with a simple phone call. But she saves face and plasters her trademark smile, like she's excited to supposedly get even her best friend that betrayed her in turn, and be a good little girl for Mr. Luthor.   
  
She gives Mr. Luthor two pictures, one of a man with deep green eyes, and a young blonde woman. She offers commentary as he studies the pictures.  
  
"Mr. Micheal Twigg and Ms. Lauren Wilkerson, young lovers straight out of high-school."   
  
"Continue," Lionel probes. Chloe takes a deep breath and re-tells her theory that's part truth, part expert story-telling, a story that could evade Lionel's suspicions and buy Clark time.  
  
"Well, one night things got out of hand for these two, and Ms. Wilkerson was left with something, or someone rather, she could not deal with. A child. Told her orthodox parents, and got kicked out of her home. She was sheltered by aqquaintances for several months. Abortion was out of a question, but she couldn't get transportation to the hospital. So she gave birth to the child in her very own bedroom.   
  
"She finally worked up the courage to tell the boyfriend, but he decided a child out of wedlock could sully success, not to mention reputation. Definately not too thrilled with the prospect. Demanded 'it' to be taken for adoption. Poor eighteen-year-old mother planned to drive to nearest adoption agency in Metropolis, but impatient boyfriend insisted on dropping the baby boy to the nearest residence, the corn fields of the Kents.  
  
"Never made it back home. The mother became so distraught, she began to go a little mental. Started to scream, swerved the car into a field.   
  
"Of course, this all took place during October of 1986," Chloe scoffs.  
  
"Based on meteor research, I'm pretty sure it's the location of where a large meteor rock. If this is true, all ashes would be beyond recognition. And that would leave a toddler orphan in the Kents's posession--their story checks out."  
  
"Indeed," Lionel muses, re-reading Chloe's research, copy and pasted and edited to fit the story.   
  
"I want you to do a follow-up on this story, Ms. Sullivan," he continues, "Perhaps an interview with relatives...do you know the name of these 'aqquaintances'?"  
  
Not yet, she thinks, but gives her standard response, "I'll do my best."  
  
"My young, intrepid reporter," Lionel wistfully says, making his way out of her cubicle and on to other matters. Chloe breathes a heavy sigh of relief from her desk, shaking her head at all the things needed to be done.   
  
After a moment to collect her thoughts, she swivels the chair and reconnects to the computer, determined once again.   
  
She'll continue to spend hours at that computer, while Lionel Luthor believes he has the best of her. She'll continue to let him believe it.   
  
And she'll continue to grow away from Clark, no longer meeting one another in the hallways, but still watching for him those dark nights in the graveyard, and creating stories and reporting the not-so-truth. He'll never know all she does for him, he'll continue to wonder how he's still undercover when he's tripped so many times, and continue to think Lana is the only guardian angel in his life.   
  
Chloe will have to live with it. She can't tell either of them the truth, where and why she spends her Saturday nights cramped in this musty room.   
  
Clark thinks he has a secret?   
  
Chloe has secrets within secrets.  
  
And the worst part about her secrets is that she can't tell them.  
  
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A/N: Please review, I appreciate them all so much. Thank you! 


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